Regret and Grudge

Eri

Izuku POV:

As Hado and I brought the little girl towards the hospital, her bandages and exhausted look started to get me thinking. 'Just what brought this little girl to where she is now.' I thought about this as I remembered one of my quirks that I could use. 'Maybe I should....No. It's rude to do something like that and it's an invasion of privacy.'

"Please....stop..." The little girl shook in my arms to make what her dream was about worry me. "Stop...Stop it....Overhaul..."

Hearing that man's name, I couldn't take it anymore. 'If she said Overhaul, I need to know.' Whether for better or worse judgement, I decided to use a quirk called 'Mind Read'. To make a long story short, I can see everything that the person had felt that I touch. The problem with this one though is that I can feel any pain they may have felt at the time as if it was my own. When I touched her head and used the quirk, I was mortified. Images of the poor girl being strapped to a torture chair practically flooded my brain. Overhaul stood in the background as several scientists began prodding and slicing into the girl's arms and legs. Each cut felt like they were hitting bone for the sounds of the girl's screams to be heard. When it felt like she was on the verge of death, Overhaul walked over to place his hand on her head. Knowing what this was, I stopped not wanting to envision what he was doing to know exactly what was going to happen.

"Hado. Take her." I passed the girl to Hado before turning and throwing up in a garbage can that I saw beside me.

"Are you gonna be ok? You just threw up out of nowhere."

"Bluegh!" I kept vomitting for a few more minutes before taking my head up and turning to my upper classmate. "I'll be fine. But she needs a doctor from what I've seen of her memories. Maybe also a psychiatrist or five or something."

"Wait. Why a psychiatrist?"

"I'll explain later." We returned to our travel to reach a hospital. Hado explained what was happening to have a doctor bring the girl in and allow us to follow down the hall. We had to stop though when we reached the room he was going to offer the girl treatment. Hado and I waited outside on a bench with the memories of the girl continuing to play in my head.

A silence was between us with Hado speaking up. "Poor girl. I hope she'll be alright."

"She's got a long road ahead." I kept fidgeting my thumbs around with a thought coming to my head. "Hado. Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"...If you were subjected to torture and had to deal with it for enough time where you're almost thinking it's normal and given a way out to a normal life, would you take it even if you find out your action damned someone else to a similar fate?"

"That's a tough one. Hmm....If I had to deal with the torture regularly...I think I would. It's hard to accept it, but I'd be desperate to make it stop. Why do you ask?"

I held my head down while answering. "A while back, my father mentioned to me that someone else is making his plans possible and thrown into a similar hell I escaped from. You already know that my father was...messed up, in pretty words. *ahem* But the issue I had with hearing this was someone else was dealing with what I was because I chose to leave."

"Ok. But what does that have to do with this?" I gripped my fists before answering.

"The girl we brought in. Eri. She's that replacement. The fact it was someone else made me sick knowing, but a child? I...I just want to know if I could've done anything to avoid this."

"Well, if you want me to answer that then no." Hado said this bluntly for me to glance at her. "Bad things happen. You can't change that. Ryukyu mentioned to me that feeling guilty when there was absolutely nothing you could've done to avoid someone getting hurt isn't what you need. You can't win everything and everything can't turn out right. Anyone that thinks it can is delusional to the truth and needs to know the truth the world isn't always fair. Yes this might've happened because you left whatever your dad put you in, but you didn't do this to her. If we're being honest, I don't think you did anything wrong or reason to deserve to be judged. I've seen terrible things people have done. I've made bad choices on the field and people have gotten hurt cause of me. But here's the difference. You at best, didn't directly make this happen. If Ryukyu was here, she'd probably tell you that you have no reason to blame yourself for something someone else did because you wanted to live. You helped save her and this is what matters."